Samsung's Galaxy S II invades the US in August - <AUTHOR> http://venturebeat.com/2011/07/20/samsung-galaxy-s-ii-us-launch/

<comment><USER2> Doesn't sound definitive to me. I'm sure they want to be in the US, but until they announce a launch date or at least a carrier, I won't get my hopes up just yet.

</comment><comment><USER3> There will be four variants of the GSII in the US, one for each of the big carriers. "Attain" (AT&T), "Within" (Sprint), "Function" (Verizon), and "Hercules" (T-Mobile). This article ([http://www.infosyncworld.com/reviews/cell-phones/samsung- gal...](http://www.infosyncworld.com/reviews/cell-phones/samsung- galaxy-s2-scheduled-for-august-release/12178.html)) has a bit more info.

</comment><comment><USER4> Does anyone know why it hits the US market later than Europe and Japan? Maybe the software patent issues?

<comment><USER5> The carriers are a bunch of bitches and they won't let a manufacturer simply sell a phone without jumping through a thousand hoops.

Rigorous network testing is a good thing, but they won't stop until the phone has a silly name (Spring Within!) a silly new plastic skin and a load of crapware on the phone.

<comment><USER6> This is why I've imported all my phones for the past 7+ years...

Nokia 6820

Sony Ericsson M600i (white)

Nokia N95 8gb

Nokia N900

Galaxy S2

It's a tad more expensive than a locked-in contract plan but you get your phone many months before the US Market (if they get it at all) and none of the Marketing / Carrier BS.

Having a smartphone years ago was almost like owning a really nice car, everyone used to ask me about the 6820/M600i especially. Now the only advantage is getting something a few months earlier, so the markets are at least improving in that most great phones are making it to the US markets. The US mobile market was complete garbage years ago compared to what it is now...

<comment><USER7> Do you still get 3G? AT&T and T-Mobile both use different 3G frequencies than the rest of the world. You can easily just plug in a SIM to a foreign phone but you may not get 3G.

<comment><USER6> That used to be an issue with phones 5 years ago (like the M600i, which I bought purely because it looked cool), but these days with most phones being Quad-band 2G / Tri-band 3G (or better) it's pretty easy to get a phone that will work on most freq. here in the US. Howardforums is full of people that do this all the time.

Obviously you're stuck if Verizon is your choice of network... I mostly just hop around on T-Mobile / AT&T depending on who has the towers that support the phone I want. I think the Galaxy S2 may be the last phone I import early though, like I said the only real disadvantage to the US markets these days is launch lag time... We're getting all the best hardware now. Sometimes it's even good to wait, because there's always bugs that are worked out with any first release.

<comment><USER7> That's not my experience with T-Mobile. It uses the pretty non-standard 1700Mhz. I bought a HTC Wildfire a while ago and only got 2G. AT&T may be a different experience.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> For the first time ever I got to own a product I really wanted before you people in the US did.

Cool!

<comment><USER9> As a person residing in the US, I've been wanting any of a number of your European high efficiency diesel engine equipped automobiles for _YEARS_.

<comment><USER7> Can't you just order one from BMW/VW/Mercedes/etc? I know at least one owner of a recent 3-series diesel BMW in California.

In fact the same should be possible with this phone. You can just buy it yourself and plug in a SIM, that's just not common in the US. The 3G frequencies are sometimes not the same though.</comment></comment></comment>


Bashtop Linux resource monitor – it is great - <AUTHOR> https://davemateer.com/2020/05/02/Bashtop-linux-alternative-to-task-manager <comment><USER3> That's fastastic. Here's an ebuild: [https://github.com/jakeogh/jakeogh/blob/master/sys- process/b...](https://github.com/jakeogh/jakeogh/blob/master/sys- process/bashtop/bashtop-9999.ebuild)

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> op here: @g_aristocrat is the author of the package who is a great person - <USER2> has put some feature requests for me really quickly. My screen wasn't showing the correct fonts (braille!) to show pretty graphs which it is now. I use the project daily as a sanity check overview of a server.

</comment><comment><USER4> An apt repository for a Bash script? :-)</comment>


How to lose friends and alienate people - <AUTHOR> http://www.economist.com/node/18958553

<comment><USER2> As mentioned in the Economist piece, John Malone is a competitor of Murdoch's who acquired a 17% stake in Murdoch's company back in 2004. I googled him and found this interesting article about John Malone:

[http://www.independent.co.uk/news/people/profiles/john- malon...](http://www.independent.co.uk/news/people/profiles/john-malone-the- man-who-shook-up-murdoch-533050.html)

This piece goes a little more into the psychology of Malone and Murdoch.

</comment><comment><USER3> For those who are not familiar with it, the title is a play on the extremely popular book by Dale Carnegie, "How to Win Friends and Influence People" ([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/How_to_Win_Friends_and_Influenc...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/How_to_Win_Friends_and_Influence_People)).

<comment><AUTHOR> Warren Buffet's bedside book, by the way. I read it a few years ago and have been putting its teachings in practice consistently with great results. The book seems a little silly at first sight, but it really isn't.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: How do you list bad projects on your resume? - <AUTHOR>

Before I had any kind of professional network to help me find jobs I had to take contract jobs at places like banks. In many cases, the approach to solving problems and technology used was just face-in-palm bad. But as an outsider, I was only there to crank out code and not make decisions.<p>How do I list experience on a resume in which I don't really want to talk about? <comment><USER3> Just the facts, ma'am.

Unless the gig was very short (and so can be safely omitted), there's no reason to be coy about simply listing, in objective terms, where you worked and what you did. If you like, you can simply go into more detail (lines / bullet points) about the positive experiences, and less detail about the negative ones.

Also, you can safely "couch" negative experiences (like being fired for no particular reason, or effectively forced to quit by some domineering jerk) in various ways, like for example when it comes to listing references -- because it kind of looks bad not to have at least one reference for recent gigs, at least -- to simply not give the phone number of the obtuse junior manager which was the main reason you quit anyway, but listing instead a compatriot developer, perhaps still bound to his desks with golden handcuffs, but who knew the deal about what was going on in that sorry place, and won't be shy about putting a positive spin on your time there.

Basic idea being is that if you _must_ convey negative (or simply lackluster) information about a former employer, it's vastly better to let someone else do it for you.

Or if you must deal the poop yourself, at least try to soft-pedal it so that the basic truth gets across (while still not sounding like you're nursing a grudge): so instead of saying "OMG they were so clueless", true though this may be, you can say things like "well they weren't really interested in trying new ways of doing things, so ultimately I felt my talents were underutilized."

</comment><comment><USER4> Personally I think resume's are loads of crap and I do my best to avoid giving them out. I find it a much better strategy to talk about what problems a manager is facing and how my joining the team will help resolve those problems.

To answer your question though...

Try to quantify what kind of impact your work had to either the top or bottom line and avoid talking down the team or technology used.

Barring that, talk about what kinds of problems the project solved and what it helped the team/group/company accomplish.

If you can't even do that, then I would just mention the workplace and job title and talk up other parts of your history and/or skill set

<comment><USER5> "I find it a much better strategy to talk about what problems a manager is facing and how my joining the team will help resolve those problems."

This. I have a short list of 3-4 references and 3-4 gigs that I've done that I use with all my potential new clients. This covers pretty much any scenario I have the capability to handle on my own. Aside from that, I don't much advertise my other work unless it applies. I'd rather talk about the potential new client's issues and how I've dealt with them in the past, in specifics, than talk of a job gone wrong that has nothing to do with their need.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Either you don't mention it, or you mention you did grunt work, what you've been told, even if you knew you could've done better.

Something like: "Despite my numerous attempts to convince the powers that be to implement $solution using $awesome_stuff, the policy remained the same: stick with $ancient_pile_of_dog_poo. But a job needs to be done, and so it was."

This has the advantage of suggesting that you will do what you're told - <USER2> neccessarily without trying to have your say first, but eventually, the job gets done.

</comment><comment><USER7> Who uses resumes still? They are very easy to fake and I think no one takes it serious anymore.

<comment><AUTHOR> I hate resumes but people still ask for them. LinkedIn profiles are also in high demand and the last thing I want to do is maintain another profile. I'd rather be coding.</comment></comment>


Tests confirm new iPad's display is close to studio reference quality - <AUTHOR> http://venturebeat.com/2012/03/20/new-ipad-screen-tests/ <comment><USER2> Here are the actual numbers from Anandtech (knows displays well):

[http://www.anandtech.com/show/5689/the-new-ipad-retina- displ...](http://www.anandtech.com/show/5689/the-new-ipad-retina-display- analysis/3)

Essentially it covers sRGB but "only" 65% of Adobe RGB colorspace. For reference, the Apple 27" Cinema Display covers 84% and the Dell 2408WFP covers 104%.

So it's the best mobile display by a margin, but hasn't caught even the consumer studio desktop monitors out there when it comes to Color Gamut.

<comment><USER3> Given that there's still no color management of CSS/HTML colors on the web (except as an opt-in feature of Firefox) and web colors are specified to be sRGB, most JPEG images floating around (like those produced by digital cameras) are sRGB, sRGB uses the same primaries as HDTV meaning that it will properly display television and movies, etc. etc., I think an sRGB makes plenty of sense for an iPad.

I don't know what the color management situation is on iPad apps now, but when I last was looking at iOS development a couple years ago, iPhones/iTouches did no color management of anything, meaning that colors of all apps & content changed from one device generation to another. If that's still the case, then I think sRGB is the best target display gamut.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Fascinating, but I'm curious: does this matter? So _I_ bought a plasma screen television (instead of an LCD) a couple of years ago because the image quality was so much better and the price premium was modest, but I've noticed that LCD seems to have won the screen wars. I assume that this happened because people preferred to pay modestly less for LCDs even if the screen quality was worse. If this is the case, why, besides geekery, would iPad screen quality matter that much?

<comment><USER5> Listen, my girlfriend is wild about her iPad. She is far more into it than she has ever been into her Mac laptop. For her, the laptop is boring and she uses it for work, but the iPad is her link to her loved ones. Every Saturday she does a Skype call with her parents (who live in Poland). When she is cooking she listens to Polish radio, via the iPad. When she travels she takes the iPad, not the laptop, so she can check her email, and Facebook.

She does not watch much TV, so the quality of a TV would never matter to her. She does not even have cable, or Netflix.

The iPad is the main consumer electronic device in her life. In terms of hours of use per day, she uses the iPad even more than her cellphone. (She has a fairly old and "dumb" cellphone.)

The other day we were walking down the street (Columbus Avenue, up in north Manhattan) and we passed a store that was advertising the new iPad. She wanted to go in and check it out. There is no other electronic device that she would go out of her way to see.

For some people, the quality of the iPad matters far more than the quality of any other consumer electronic device. And these are not necessarily technical people.

<comment><USER6> The fact that non-technical people love their iPads is clear. But it doesn't automatically follow that the iPad screen quality (v2 to v3) matters much or at all to those users.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> "Soneira notes that with some minor calibration, the new iPad's screen could qualify as a studio reference monitor"

But of course there is no calibration available so...

I'm also wondering about the people who got yellowish iPads, that maybe the color consistency is not where you would want it to be for something that is not calibratable.

</comment><comment><USER8> I read through the original DisplayMate piece to this linked observation ("Line of Purples") on color gamut: <http://www.displaymate.com/Gamut_6.html>

I found it concise and interesting in its own right, in particular this bit: _Note that consumer content does not include colors outside of the Standard Gamut, so a display with a wider Color Gamut cannot show colors that aren't in the original and will only produce inaccurate exaggerated on-screen colors._

P.S. I also note how much of "seldom occurring" reality inside human vision limits is being chopped off. I'd make an analogy with phone lines: the 300-3400 Hz limits are good enough for direct communication, but the "seldom occurring" higher and lower frequencies are also important.</comment>


Show HN: About.me better Alternative? - <AUTHOR> https://usercv.com <comment><AUTHOR> Feedback are welcome. If you have any suggestion or idea or improvement to share, feel free to share!

Thanks</comment>


Gandhi for the Post-Truth Age - <AUTHOR> https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/10/22/gandhi-for-the-post-truth-age <comment><USER2> I am reminded of restorative justice advocate Bryan Stevenson's quote from his memoir describing his life's work of defending death row inmates: "Each of us is more than the worst thing we've ever done." Certainly this might apply to someone who is credited with world-changing outcomes like Mohandas Gandhi?

To me, the fact that these kinds of questions about Gandhi's legacy is even a conversation being held in public discourse -- this says little about Gandhi, and a lot about our collective inability to handle the cognitive dissonance of good people making mistakes or having dark sides. More relevant to this conversation than an appraisal of Gandhi is James Gunn getting kicked off of his movie, or any of the other random people who get fired or lives ruined for some random crap they posted on Twitter. When can we start collectively adopting some understanding of restorative principles and put the days of outrage culture behind us?

Sure, Gandhi had real flaws -- MLK as well with his womanizing, Churchill with his drinking and many other men and women with great accomplishments in their lifetime. Nassir Ghaemi wrote an interesting book on how he believes there is even a link between great leaders and certain kinds of mental illness. It is sobering and reasonable to have a conversation about the consequences and harms perpetuated by the flaws and mistakes of our past icons, made throughout a lifetime. But to borrow from the article:

> ...even Gandhi's harshest detractors do not deny that he steadfastly > defended, and eventually sacrificed his life for, many values under assault > today—fellow-feeling for the weak, and solidarity and sympathy between > people of different nations, religions, and races.

The guy was a man of tremendous courage and tenacity, who paved a path for other great men of courage and tenacity to win significant moral victories for our collective conscience. (Though this path may have become obsolete as "having a conscience" goes out of fashion among modern overlords.) Having read Zinn's A People's History of the United States, I can confidently say there's plenty of worthwhile things to be conflicted or outraged about when it comes to historical revisionism. But Gandhi? Not high on my list. Attacking the guy because he lacked the full modern conception of intersectionality is like knocking over an Amelia Earhart statue because she didn't fly across the Atlantic in an F-22. How are you going to try to diminish someone's historic accomplishments by comparing them to a modern contextualization of the task?

But despite my position on the absurdity of the premise, I think this article does draw some interesting parallels between Gandhi's thought and life's work and some of the challenges we face in political economy today. I'm grateful to the author for mentioning that Tim Rogan book on the moral economists, as I have only recently become of Karl Polanyi and his ideas and have not heard of Tawney or Thompson.

<comment><USER3> The problem with your argument is that the points against Gandhi do not just boil down to a 'bad action'. This is not about 'the worst thing he's ever done' i.e. some statement, or action, or whatever - it was his outlook and actions which were consistently problematic.

Gandhi's legacy is full of hypocritical issues like hyper nationalism, racism, his weird personal habit of sleeping with young girls and boys (and a ton of other weird sexual ideologies), his forbidding of his wife to receive 'Western Medicine' which led to her death but then of course his own consumption of such medicine when his life was at risk etc. etc..

The 'absurdity' I think is the degree to which these figures are hyper romanticized, and our inability to just see them for who they are.

From: Great Soul: Mahatma Gandhi and His Struggle with India, Joseph Lelyveld

"Gandhi's pejorative reference to nakedness is ironic considering that, as Mr. Lelyveld details, when he was in his 70s and close to leading India to independence, he encouraged his 17-year-old great-niece, Manu, to be naked during her "nightly cuddles" with him. After sacking several long-standing and loyal members of his 100-strong personal entourage who might disapprove of this part of his spiritual quest, Gandhi began sleeping naked with Manu and other young women. He told a woman on one occasion: "Despite my best efforts, the organ remained aroused. It was an altogether strange and shameful experience.

Yet he could also be vicious to Manu, whom he on one occasion forced to walk through a thick jungle where sexual assaults had occurred in order for her to retrieve a pumice stone that he liked to use on his feet. When she returned in tears, Gandhi "cackled" with laughter at her and said: "If some ruffian had carried you off and you had met your death courageously, my heart would have danced with joy.""

This is more than a 'drinking problem'.

<comment><USER4> The actions of those people are romanticised and from those actions is constructed a metaphorical figure that resembles, but does not equal the actual man. You need the man in order to have a story and you need the story in order to convey the message. The idealised romantic Gandhi is a tool with which to illustrate the moral, and an ideal for which to strive. Of course you shouldn't mirror Gandhi in all matters, but his idealised version is still a good example to follow.

Were Gandhi's actions so abhorrent as to make it good to tear down the morals of social justice his activism taught us? Is he such a monster that you would destroy your own culture and society by denying them the good examples he set with the other part of his life? In a way you're cutting off your nose to spite someone else's face. What Gandhi did is done and whoever can claim damages that should be repaid can claim them via court. But the man is dead now and putting him on trial is a disservice to his memory and to our culture.

<comment><USER3> "Were Gandhi's actions so abhorrent as to make it good to tear down the moral"

Yes.

Gandhi - during the height of his 'moral claims' \- was a 70 year old man sleeping with a harem of young girls, urging them not to sleep with their husbands, got erections, possibly had intercourse, and then talked about it, and oppressed / moved aside anyone who didn't agree.

The logic he would use to validate his sexual predation is byzantine, i.e. based on a 'spiritual experiment', and exactly the same as the insane logic that cult leaders use:

"If I don't let Manu sleep with me, though I regard it as essential that she should," he announced, "wouldn't that be a sign of weakness in me?" [1]

He's also on the record with hyper racist, xenophobic and Hindu nationalist rhetoric.

Gandhi was a Hindu nationalist, of the same vein as most other nationalists - but he used 'non violent' populist rhetoric because he was an intellect and 'non violence' was going to be the only reproach that would work. Were Indians to be able to organize in terms of hard power during the Raj, they certainly would have i.e. Momar Gaddafi, Fidel Castro, even George Washington! India has a different culture and so their 'George Washington' was going to look a little different.

But the issue is not Gandhi of course : the issue is _the perception of Gandhi_.

Consider how much hagiography there is out there about Gandhi - even his Wikipedia page is not only bereft of his questionable behaviour, but it's turned upside down!

Have a look [2]

His Wiki entry states that 'his time in South Africa' was formative, and enabled him to develop his views on racism, Imperialism etc. etc. - when in fact, at the very same time, we have him on record with his most racist ideology: "Gandhi described black Africans as "savage," "raw" and living a life of "indolence and nakedness," and he campaigned relentlessly to prove to the British rulers that the Indian community in South Africa was superior to native black Africans." [3]

So the 'common public record' is distorted to the point that it's totally upside down!

This is because the 'common public record' is guarded by groups in the East who want to maintain his idol status, and groups in the West who want to embrace particularly his anti-Imperial (read: anti Western?) views.

Gandhi did some very good things for Hindu India surely, and had some very positive and powerful things to day, but he was hugely flawed.

Hey, George Washington fought for a war of 'independence' where 'all men should be free' ... and he had slaves!

It is what it is.

[1] [https://www.independent.co.uk/arts- entertainment/books/featu...](https://www.independent.co.uk/arts- entertainment/books/features/thrill-of-the-chaste-the-truth-about-gandhis-sex- life-1937411.html)

[2][https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mahatma_Gandhi](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mahatma_Gandhi)

[3] [https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2015/09/03...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2015/09/03/what- did-mahatma-gandhi-think-of-black-people/?utm_term=.8d166a7cb356)

<comment><USER5> This is calumny, to the point that there is a 3 year old badhistory post specifically dealing with these insinuations.

[https://www.reddit.com/r/badhistory/comments/3iiwxr/the_sexu...](https://www.reddit.com/r/badhistory/comments/3iiwxr/the_sexual_proclivities_of_one_mohandas_k_gandhi/)

> he interesting thing about Gandhi, though, was that his views did evolve and > change. What he saw and experienced in South Africa changed his views on > racial supremacy, particularly in Africa. By 1906, he wrote about the > Bambatha Rebellion, saying:

>>"The Zulu 'rebellion' was full of new experiences and gave me much food for thought. The Boer War had not brought home to me the horrors of war with anything like the vividness that the 'rebellion' did. This was no war but a man-hunt. To hear every morning reports of the soldiers' rifles exploding like crackers in innocent Hamlets, and to live in the midst of them was a trial. But I swallowed the bitter draught, especially as the work of my Corps consisted only in nursing the wounded Zulus. I could see that but for us the Zulus would have been uncared for. This work, therefore, eased my conscience.""

>Working in and among Africans humanised them for him, and made it so that his ideas of them changed. Much like any other human being, Gandhi grew and learned from his experiences. Would it have been great from the outset if he'd known that Africans were equal people? Sure, but in the early 20th century, I'm not going to fault him for being racist and then changing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Everything is so black and white nowadays or it always was, I dont know. Gandhi had his failings, but if you aggregate his life, he was definitely a positive force in the world.

<comment><USER7> Unless you're from a minority group his disparaged from a perspective of genetic superiority... net positive...

<comment><USER5> Is this related to the lines he recanted later? Which groups?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Gandhi is usually associated with peaceful behavior because of his non-violent resistance ideas.

But these romanticized portrayals of Gandhi often omit darker aspects of his persona like his racist quotes about Africans.

<comment><USER5> Theres a reddit bad history post on gandhi, and its probably the gold standard for dealing with the new edge to Gandhi's history. (Learning about Gandhi is like peeling off alternating layers - hes a saint, no he isn't, oh he really is a saint).

IN essence, Gandhi grew up and discarded his racist views.

Do note that this portrayal deals specifically with this particular criticism which is popular today, and provides the (usually) missing context.

Heres the bad history post - [https://www.reddit.com/r/badhistory/comments/3iiwxr/the_sexu...](https://www.reddit.com/r/badhistory/comments/3iiwxr/the_sexual_proclivities_of_one_mohandas_k_gandhi/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I find it interesting that there are no comments about how SV culture and ethos compare to Gandhi's ideas, as described in the article, on morality and how to achieve a better world.

</comment><comment><USER10> When, a human such as Gandhi is worshipped especially in an era when factual history is plausible; his shortcomings would definitely be contended with.

There is no doubt that he's a tactician & along with great thinkers of that period paved way for the united republic of India; an unition of several civilizations made plausible by the common anger towards colonial British.

But is his shortcomings a worthy argument to defame him? One does for sure - 'Casteism'; when a certain group of people are subjugated to carry human feaces in their head & you call it a noble duty defined by your religion; that man - The Gandhi & anyone who endorses the inhuman activity deserves to be shamed.

<comment><USER11> He didn't call it a noble duty. He said they were gods own people, to try to de-stigmatize them and legitimize them in the eyes of a very religious country.

<comment> saiya-jin Well you either make them equal to the rest or keep them at the bottom.

I read an article about him recently, basically he was racist towards africans, and also refused antibiotics for his wife which died because of that. Argument was that no foreign agent should be inside her body or something similar. When he got seriously sick, he happily accepted medicine though.

I guess any influential/powerful figure has their dark side. Perfectly fine, balanced and nice people don't end up in the spotlight, they just live their ordinary lives and die their ordinary deaths. And sometimes, the dark side can be pretty deep one, especially after some time passes and societal norms change (ie Churchill discussed here recently too).

I presume we all have some darker side which we are aware of, that's why maybe the very strong desire to idolize somebody who is so high above the rest.

<comment><USER5> I find the bad history post on Gandhi to be the shortest path to get up to speed with the current iteration of Gandhi criticism - [https://www.reddit.com/r/badhistory/comments/3iiwxr/the_sexu...](https://www.reddit.com/r/badhistory/comments/3iiwxr/the_sexual_proclivities_of_one_mohandas_k_gandhi/)

The upshot being that as a barrister in South Africa he was privileged and racist as was the norm, but his exposure as a stretcher bearer during an uprising helped him awaken and discard that aspect of his thought.

But its always interesting to see how Gandhi gets discussed, the more people learn about him. In essence Gandhi is constantly being torn down, and constantly being rediscovered and built back up

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Why are people even calling out the wrong fact presenters like Pankaj Mishra.

He has proved himself to be a wrong, factually, ethically person all the time.

<comment><USER13> Could you share a few examples of his factual incorrectness?

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Reading the first paragraph, and the article already seems off to a shaky start.

> The Indian Prime Minister, Narendra Modi, cites V. D. Savarkar, a far-right > Hindu supremacist who was accused of involvement in Gandhi's assassination, > in 1948, as his ideological mentor.

I am not Hindu, and I can't stand Savarkar. However, I've never heard a justification for calling him a Hindu supremacist. He wanted India to be a Hindu country, not because he thought Hindus were superior, but more as a homeland for what he conceived as Hindu culture. I don't like this recent trend of calling everyone you can't stand a [something]-supremacist.

<comment><USER15> I do not believe there is a trend of calling "everyone you can't stand a [something]-supremacist" \-- surely this is a dishonest retort to a label that is being applied very specifically to a radical nationalist.

Now, if your dispute is that you think there's daylight between an ethno- religious nationalist and an ethno-religious supremacist, fine, make that argument, but let's not act like the label is coming entirely out of left field. And please be aware that if you draw a distinction between those things, you provide cover for actual [something]-supremacists, because god knows David Duke has had no problem saying "gee whiz, I'm just saying I see America as a homeland for what I conceive as White culture". In fact, the shift from "white supremacist" to "white separatist" or "white nationalist" has been a very deliberate project by white supremacists, and I suspect the same is true for (ethno-)nationalists of all stripes.

<comment><USER14> > surely this is a dishonest retort to a label that is being applied very > specifically to a radical nationalist

It's not dishonest at all. I have noticed this trend in the last couple of years, where the likes of Sam Harris and Douglas Murray are called white- supremacists. Modi has been called a Hindu supremacist. I don't know much about David Duke, so I'll not comment about him.

> if your dispute is that you think there's daylight between an ethno- > religious nationalist and an ethno-religious supremacist, fine, make that > argument

Why does this case need to be made? There have been plenty of common counterexamples throughout modern history. Just look at the plethora of atheist Jews who are Zionists but don't believe in the concept of the promised land, or look at the formation of Pakistan, or even the split up of Czechoslovakia or Yugoslavia, which did not have religious motivations.

It's not like I have no skin in the game. If the likes of Pravin Togadia (actual Hindu supremacist -- I've heard his speeches live) have their way, and India became a Hindu country, I'll be made a refugee. But yes, dishonest characterizations of political opponents and calling them [something]-supremacists is a trend now.

<comment><USER16> What does split of Czechoslovakia has with any of this? At least make examples that make some sense instead of invoking generaly obscure events in hope people wont catch the trick.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> >> black activists such as Adam Clayton Powell, Sr., and Benjamin Mays were enthralled by the phenomenon of an Indian leading people of color in the campaign against British colonialism in India.

Is the writer calling Indians "people of color"

<comment><USER18> Is that incorrect? Wikipedia says:

The term "person of color" (plural: people of color, persons of color; sometimes abbreviated POC)[1] is used primarily in the United States to describe any person who is not white.

I'm not from the US myself and so am not greatly acquainted with how it's usually employed.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> This is political propaganda and has nothing to do with tech. Also fertile ground for flame topics. Flagged.

<comment><USER20> The content is inevitably partly political, but the article is not propaganda. It's a review of recent writings about Gandhi, interesting not just for how different they are but because interpretations of Gandhi have changed so much over time.

HN is explicitly not just for "tech". Please review the site guidelines: [https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html). Your last sentence breaks them too.</comment></comment>


Graphical languages of the Russian space program - <AUTHOR> http://lambda-the-ultimate.org/node/4534 <comment><USER2> What are the icons for "big explosion" and "vodka"?</comment>


A Prof. and his fake confernce that is running over a decade - <AUTHOR> https://sites.google.com/site/dumpconf/

<comment><USER2> I wonder. Here's a relevant one-year-old item from The Red and Black newspaper (more about The Red and Black at Wikipedia <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Red_and_Black>): [http://www.redandblack.com/news/professor-deals-with- elabora...](http://www.redandblack.com/news/professor-deals-with-elaborate- cyber-attack/article_03344d54-cd7f-5753-a870-e3bcee5c87ce.html)

</comment><comment><USER3> This is crazy.. All I want to say..</comment>


Ruby Summer of Code - <AUTHOR> http://rubysoc.org

<comment><USER2> They really need to make the requirements for students a little more clear (for example, I'm a senior in HS, can I apply?). I'd assume they'll flesh that out before they open the student app.

Also, from the questions for students they list there, it seems like they might get some pretty bad outcomes:

> _Why do you use Ruby and/or Rails? How would you like to see them improve?

Outline the specific project you're proposing.

Why is this important to the Ruby and/or Rails communities at large? Why is this important to you?

List a clear set of goals/milestones you'll hit during the summer, along with a rough timeline. Be specific about your deliverables.

What are the "unknowns" in this project for you? What kind of pitfalls could you run into?

How will you measure progress? How will you handle falling behind?_

To liken it to startups/YC, they're asking a lot about the idea, but not at all about "the team" (the applicant). Anyone can say "I'm going to make something awesome" even if they aren't very good at writing Ruby and will almost certainly not do well.

Sure, they don't give you money unless you hit milestones, but they could experience plenty of projects that technically do what they should but are so badly written that they're certain to go nowhere.

That said, I'm really excited for this both as a potential participant and as a Rubyist who would love to see some cool new projects come of it.

Edit: They also should make it a bit more clear what kinds of projects they want. Just things that are directly useful to ruby programmers (libraries, Rails plugins, etc)? Cool tools that are useful to developers in general (something like <http://hurl.it/>)? Any piece of software that's useful to the world and written in Ruby (like some good website written in Rails)? My guess is the first 2 only, but that's just a guess.

<comment><USER3> Apparently it holds the same eligibility requirements as GSoC, so you probably wouldn't be able to participate. (Me neither! :()

<comment><USER2> That's pretty lame. I can get around that restriction because I'm taking a differential equations class at the University of Delaware, so I'm "a college student" :) But if I have to be 18 (as with GSoC), I'm out of luck, sadly.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> This project has been created with good intentions and I hope people get some good out of it. I'm not going to slam this well-meant project, but being modelled on the Google Summer of Code, I have some reservations. The GSOC FAQ states some primary "goals" of the program:

 _CREATE AND RELEASE OPEN SOURCE CODE FOR THE BENEFIT OF ALL_

Paying people to be motivated to bother to work on open source code seems odd. If someone comes along with a _"I really want to do X but I need $Y to live"_ request (as Gregory Brown did a couple years back - <http://rubymendicant.wikidot.com/proposal>) that's cool, because the request has come from an intrinsic motivation and you can choose to donate based on the utility of the work that will be done (and Greg did a great job on Prawn, by the way).

With a GSOC-like program, there's a _pitching_ process by students who are being provided an extrinsic motivation of $5000. Yet, this extrinsic motivator does _not_ realistically reflect the typical motivations for contributing to open source projects. The money provides an American Idol-esque motivation of "try this out to win fame/money" rather than encouraging those who are _already_ trying hard.

 _INSPIRE YOUNG DEVELOPERS TO BEGIN PARTICIPATING IN OPEN SOURCE DEVELOPMENT_

Is offering a (monetary) reward a good way to get someone with no experience to start doing something? Perhaps, but in something like open source, does it make sense to wave money at people who aren't already intrinsically attracted towards the cause? It feels like paying your kids to do housework to me.

Open source is tough enough to _need_ serious intrinsic motivation from its participants (even if you're ultimately doing it for "fame" or to get a job). Are these new people going to stick around when there's no easy money? Looking at past GSOCs, many participants appear to be folks who were _already_ contributing to open source development (if in a small way) but who happened to get lucky with a nice stipend to do something they were already motivated to do. That seems against the spirit of the program.

 _PROVIDE STUDENTS THE OPPORTUNITY TO DO WORK RELATED TO THEIR ACADEMIC PURSUITS DURING THE SUMMER (THINK "FLIP BITS, NOT BURGERS")_

Limiting the program to the "young" and/or "students" also strikes me as odd. Google has this educationally elitist air about it at the best of times. Is the average software engineering student flipping burgers all summer nowadays? I suspect the people flipping burgers are those who made bad decisions at a younger age and are now stuck in that world.

Encouraging disadvantaged developers who aren't academically active through a program like GSOC would be awesome, because some real chances to turn people's lives around would appear rather than saving some university students from the real world. Help people who flip burgers for pocket money or help people who are stuck flipping burgers _all year_ too?

 _GIVE STUDENTS MORE EXPOSURE TO REAL-WORLD SOFTWARE DEVELOPMENT SCENARIOS (E.G., DISTRIBUTED DEVELOPMENT, SOFTWARE LICENSING QUESTIONS, MAILING-LIST ETIQUETTE)_

Again, they need to be _paid_ to learn this stuff? If they're not familiar with these concepts and they're taking software engineering classes, we need a campaign to fix the syllabi.

All that said, I know the people behind this campaign and that they mean all the best, and I hope some students get some good value from it. Good luck.

<comment><USER5> Some seriously good points there, Peter.

I also do not question the motives or integrity of the people behind this, and like you I don't care for the emphasis on students.

I don't care so much that they get paid; hell, I wish people would pay _me_ for doing open source software. I don't think it will alter any future motivations of anyone.

But it may be entirely possible to achieve the desired results without the pay out, and archive other useful goals with that money.

Now, it's easy to harp and suggest all sorts of imagined plans, while RSOC as it stands is real. So big props for making this happen.

I think, though, that some separation of project acceptance and funding for expenses would have been useful. E.g., first have people (really should be open to anyone) pitch their project. Then, if accepted, they can argue for financial support, if they can show some documented need.

Yeah, it's more work, and maybe the sort of thing that makes the difference between a nice sounding plan and a real program. But I agree that waving the $$ up front might be the wrong incentive.

<comment><USER2> What's "documented need"? Hosting costs for the project? Room & board for the summer? College tuition?

I might not be considered to have "need." I'd live in my parents' house if I were to do this. I have to pay a good portion of my Stanford tuition somehow or another, but I could see you determing that that's not "need." (And if it is need, then >95% of your applicants will have at last $5k of tuition to pay for the year, so everyone will have need.)

Regardless of whether I "need" the money, spending an entire summer hacking full-time has some serious opportunity cost. I could get a real job (and make >$5k). I could hang out with my friends every day.

Do you really expect college students, most of whom have little money, to line up to forgo ~$10k of income (roughly the amount you can make at a programming internship, varying wildly of course) so they can do an open source project?

Sure, it would probably be more fun; it would be have completely flexible hours; you might not end up quite having to work full-time on it. But still. I'm a lot more likely to do it if I at least get a good portion of the compensation I could get from working.

And even if you do find people to do it, the quality of people will be a lot worse. For the most part, you'll get the people who _don't_ have an opportunity cost of $10k because they're not good enough at programming to land a good job over the summer. So you'd probably just end up wasting a lot of the mentors' time because you'd have to accept lower-quality people. The money helps you be selective and hopefully get some truly high quality projects out of it.

<comment><USER4> _Do you really expect college students, most of whom have little money, to line up to forgo ~$10k of income (roughly the amount you can make at a programming internship, varying wildly of course) so they can do an open source project?_

People should go where they can get the most overall value. Getting $10K for an in-the-flesh internship at a development shop is easily better value than $5K from the GSOC program for most people.

People who are good for open source are attracted to it naturally. They care about more than money. That's my whole point really.. that the best people in open source _aren't_ motivated by cash, so why attract people who are?

<comment><USER2> Sure. And I'm not saying there are people who love OSS who will give up OSS altogether because they can't or won't do SOC for free. They'd still hack OSS on the side, but they wouldn't do SOC.

There's lots of college students that really need to bring in some money over the summer so they can afford their tuition. Plenty are already taking out loans as it is.

Think of it like the YC money--it's not all that much, lots of the companies don't really need it, it generally isn't the main attraction, but some great people absolutely need it to participate, so giving it ensures that no one will have to turn the opportunity down because of money

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Doesn't this only exist because the Rails project's Google Summer of Code application was denied this year?: <http://twitter.com/rails/status/10685448004>

<comment><USER7> No.

I'm not inside of the decision loop, but this is because of a perception that Google's SOC administrators didn't want to work with Ruby Central over the last two years.

I do not think that this perception is correct, but Ruby Central _was not_ provided a mentorship spot last year and chose not to apply for a mentorship spot this year.

This is a Ruby Central initiative.

<comment><USER8> Interesting. Google have accepted other like organisations, for eg. The Perl Foundation (<http://www.perlfoundation.org/google_summer_of_code_2010>), so they really should accept Ruby Central.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Anyone have ideas as to how I might go about thinking of a project that would sound promising and be helpful to the Ruby community? I'd certainly consider myself a proficient Ruby developer, but I'm not nearly as familiar with the development of these project and what they're lacking. Where might I start?

<comment><USER7> I've applied to be a mentor, and I've suggested that some of my existing projects could use some love for Ruby 1.9. One, net-ldap, has some Ruby 1.9 support, but needs more overall features and development.

Obviously, this is not just about maintenance, but these are ideas; you can also look for things that haven't yet been addressed and propose those.

Based on my experience as a GSOC mentor, though, I think that maintenance and enhancement projects (adding new features to existing projects) are more successful in the end than greenfield projects.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> My company is (well be, soon as we get off our asses and send a check) one of the sponsors of this. Why? We already do a bunch of open source; as well as the 'giving back' factor, I'm genuinely intrigued with what will be produced. Last year's outputs were a great benefit to the scene and the community. It's the kids who are on the outside and _hungry_ who are attracted to this sort of thing, and in my opinion are more capable of providing fresh genes to the pool.

Hell, 20-year-old me would've jumped at it, for the money and the fame. Actually, 20-year-old me was probably getting high in an alley, but that's a story for another day.</comment>


Explaining an astonishing slinky - <AUTHOR> http://danielwalsh.tumblr.com/day/2011/10/17

<comment><USER2> I think you're really overcomplicating this.

1\. Since gravity acts on all points of the slinky equally, you can aggregate this by saying that gravity acts on the slinky's center of mass.

2\. The slinky acts like a spring. Since it is being held stationary, the forces on the bottom part of the slinky equal out. There is a force of gravity going down which equals an upward spring force.

Therefore when it is dropped, the center of mass falls at g=9.8 m/s^2, while the bottom part initially experiences no net forces.

You can also show why the net forces on the bottom of the spring will remain 0 (0 = mg - F_spring) for a spring obeying Hooke's law (F = k*d), where d falls with gravity.

<comment><USER3> I don't think it's complicated either, but it's still (at first) unintuitive.

Interesting things tend to happen when you have forces that cancel/counteract each other (e.g., spinning a bucket of water over your head, dropping a magnet in a metal pipe)

<comment><USER4> It's more intuitive if you think of what a much tighter spring (i.e. higher spring constant) would do. First, you'd have to hold it open because gravity wouldn't be sufficient to stretch it out. If you released both ends simultaneously, it would fully contract in much less time than it would take to hit the ground. As a result, the bottom would move up fast before moving down as the fully contracted spring falls.

The interesting thing worth noting is that you don't have to carefully choose a spring such that the force of contraction is equal to the force of gravity to observe a stationary bottom end, as in the gif. You just have to let _any_ spring hang freely. Prior to release, the upwards force from the spring on it's own bottom exactly balances the downwards force from gravity. For a few moments after release, until the point when the spring contracts enough that it no longer applies the same upwards force to it's own bottom end, the forces on the bottom of the spring will remain balanced and no acceleration will be observed. This is, of course, much easier for the human eye to observe in slow motion and with a relatively large spring with a low spring constant, such as a slinky!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> My friend writes this blog and I edit it, so if people have questions, feel free to ask.

More explorations of falling slinkys:

* [http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2011/09/modeling-a-falling...](http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2011/09/modeling-a-falling-slinky/) \- a different way to model it.

* [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b9-XgSYLxDk](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b9-XgSYLxDk) \- video analysis.

* [http://wamc.org/post/dr-mike-wheatland-university-sydney-phy...](http://wamc.org/post/dr-mike-wheatland-university-sydney-physics-falling-slinky) \+ [http://www.physics.usyd.edu.au/~wheat/slinky/](http://www.physics.usyd.edu.au/~wheat/slinky/) \- more experimenting and a formal paper.

</comment><comment><USER6> The way that a slinky moves also demonstrates the question that some ask about the giant stick and the speed of light.

To explain, if you had a button a light year away and had the option to press it via a remote hand, the fastest we could tell the remote hand to press it would be one light year.

However, there has been the question of whether a long stick that is one light year in distance in lieu of sending a signal to the remote hand could be faster. The way the slinky moves would demonstrate that the giant stick would not move faster than the speed of light as the motion exerted on one end would actually travel much slower.

The slinky is quite useful for demonstrating movement of objects. :)

<comment><USER7> Even having studied relativity and such at Uni I haven't come across this particular illustration before.

It should be called the Fing-long-er Gedanken.

Thanks for sharing.

<comment><USER8> I encountered it in university, though the example was given in a freshman level course by some kid who thought he was cleverly circumventing information's speed limit. The professor seemed quite pleased with it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> This could make for a fun amusement park ride: hang from a tower a few feet off the ground using a bungee cord; detach bungee cord while simultaneously pushing horizonally; bam you're Superman until the bungee cord comes crashing on your head. Actually that last part needs work :)

<comment><USER10> This derivation assumed a uniform distribution of mass in an unstretched slinky, and that all the mass is stretchable. This probably means that in order for this to work with a human attached to the bottom of the bungee cord, the human's mass needs to be negligible compared to the mass of the bungee cord. Thus, the human getting crushed by the bungee cord is not a problem to be dealt with, it is a _requirement_.

<comment><USER11> Hmm, are you sure? The disturbance at the top of the cord has to travel downwards, and the speed at which it travels is the speed of sound in the cord itself. No matter what the mass at the bottom is, it can't "know" it's been let go of until the information propagates in the cord.

<comment><USER12> It feels it almost instantly (speed of sound in matter), because the tension in the cord is lower.

In a slinky the inertia of the slinky itself resists things, but not so in a light bungee cord.

You can try a weight at the top and bottom maybe.

<comment><USER8> If you watch the second Veritasium video, you'll see that adding a weight to the bottom of the slinky does not change any of the behavior; it still does not fall until the 'pressure front' reaches it.

A heavier weight at the top will accelerate just as fast due to gravity as a small weight. As far as I can tell the only possible effect of a weight at the top would be to ensure that the elasticity of the bungee cord does not accelerate the top _much_ faster than the speed of gravity; you should be able to just use a less elastic cord.

<comment><USER13> You could use a parachute to arrest the rate of fall. The force of the parachute acting against air resistance would resist the spring's compressive force and thus the spring would recompress more slowly, lengthening the time for the top to fall to the bottom.

<comment><USER14> I think I that would also tend to lift the rider up to compress the spring, and since the parachute is lifting the system.

<comment><USER9> Mm, no, the opposite I think – the rider will fall slowly. The spring remains extended due to the weight of the rider – being held aloft by a tower vs. a parachute makes no difference here. However the _descending_ parachute shortens the spring at a rate slow enough that it can be transmitted to the rider well before the parachute reaches the ground, so the rider will fall a little bit.

(This is analogous to simply lowering the hand holding the slinky – the bottom eventually follows suit.)

<comment><USER13> I'm pretty sure the rider stays in the same place O_o

Oh god. This is going to be the next airplane-on-treadmill isn't it.

<comment><USER8> I am very confident that it would fall.

Consider the slinky again. If I dropped it with a parachute to slow it.... no, replace "parachute" with "my hand", but assume my hand follows the same trajectory the parachute would... the end of the slinky would not wait for my hand to approach it. The information about a change (the drop) would take the same amount of time to reach the end of the slinky. The information travels just as fast, even though the information is _" we're falling slowly"_ instead of _" we're falling"_.

<comment><USER14> I was thinking of a parachute unfurling, which generates an upward force as it catches air, counteracting gravity temporarily.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> simpler explanation?

when you hold the slinky in the air by the top, the weight of the bottom is equal to the force of the tension of the spring, otherwise the bottom wouldn't remain stationary.

once you let go, the force from the spring should decrease as the top falls downward. But the top gathers up more of the bottom as it falls, so the smaller bottom needs less force to hold it in place. Apparently the decrease in mass of the bottom and decrease in tension of the spring exactly cancel each other out.

</comment><comment><USER16> My granddad was an inventor. One time he had a long slinky (I think he must have joined a few together) that was hanging, stretched out parallel to the floor, on a number of closely spaced fishing lines, attached to a 4x4 overhead.

At one end he had a geared down variable-speed motor that pushed the slinky with a sine wave motion. I believe the other end was fixed. In between, he had painted various parts of the slinky blue. The blue parts seemed to be completely still, even as the areas between the blue pulsated back and forth.

He said it was a demonstration he built "to show my ninkompoop investors about standing waves".

<comment><USER17> That's a good way to show standing waves, but did they understand what they were looking at, or did they just think it was some sort of a trick?

<comment><USER16> Well I think the "ninkompoops" invested about $10M in the 60's so they must have thought he had something going on.

I guess it was that era's version of a dog/pony show.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Amazingly, the slinky can also time travel.

</comment><comment><USER19> Does the people how think this is astonishing also think it is astonishing than one will not move forward when walking backwards on an Escalator?

<comment><USER20> This doesn't seem to be quite the same effect as the entire body of the slinky is not contracting. So, it isn't just that the bottom and top are moving together as fast as the entire slinky is falling, causing the bottom to remain stationary, but that the entire bottom of the slinky is remaining stationary (not just slowed down, but exactly stationary), in its stretched state, until the top of the slinky reaches that point. I don't think you are giving the phenomenon enough credit.</comment></comment>


1k pics of nuclear, defense, related ads published in scientific American - <AUTHOR> https://osf.io/f6yqs/ <comment><AUTHOR> a better explanation than what could fit in the title: [https://twitter.com/NuclearAnthro/status/1278544800581447680](https://twitter.com/NuclearAnthro/status/1278544800581447680)</comment>


Mathematicians Seal Loophole to Breaking RSA Encryption - <AUTHOR> https://www.quantamagazine.org/mathematicians-seal-back-door-to-breaking-rsa-encryption-20181217/ <comment><USER2> The title and the article are severely misleading. One can easily try the method described in the article and find that empirically, it doesn't work for large numbers. That implies that no one is seriously taking such a naive approach. You don't need a mathematical proof either way to know this.

But even so, the paper doesn't show that all polynomials are irreducible. It doesn't even show most are, just ones of a very special form (with 0 and 1 coefficients, randomly chosen in a certain way). Therefore, the paper doesn't rule out other kinds of polynomials, even if this were a serious approach.

Furthermore, even if the paper showed that all kinds of polynomials were almost always irreducible, that wouldn't rule out the existence of a very clever algorithm for writing the integers as values of polynomials that aren't irreducible.

Consider the following analogy: there are exceedingly many possible prime factors of 6000 digit numbers; far too many to practically test them all one after the other. I can produce a mathematical proof that shows that I'll never test primality of a 6000 digit number by trying all possible prime factors in order. But that doesn't prevent the existence of algorithms that can quite quickly tell you whether the number is prime or composite (such algorithms actually exist). Just because something looks hard or it can be proven that some naive approach is computationally infeasible, doesn't mean there isn't a very clever algorithm that makes it easy.

The authors of the actual math paper really asked for any unwanted attention they get from this news article, though. They actually give the integer factorisation problem as a motivation in their paper!

</comment><comment><USER3> This is the actual paper.

[https://arxiv.org/abs/1810.13360](https://arxiv.org/abs/1810.13360)

It's worth noticing that Riemann Hypothesis is assumed in the proof, as I layman, I think it means the proof merely gives us more _confidence_ about the difficulty of integer factorization. But integer factorization itself still remains an open question.

> _Abstract. We consider random polynomials with independent identically > distributed coefficients with a fixed law. Assuming the Riemann hypothesis > for Dedekind zeta functions, we prove that such polynomials are irreducible > and their Galois groups contain the alternating group with high probability > as the degree goes to infinity. This settles a conjecture of Odlyzko and > Poonen conditionally on RH for Dedekind zeta functions._

Page 2, _Section 1.1, Motivation_ has a summary.

> _Beyond its intrinsic interest, the problem of irreducibility of random > polynomials of high degree is motivated by some other problems, which we now > briefly discuss. It is believed to be computationally difficult to determine > the prime factorization of integers. On the other hand, polynomial time > algorithms are known for computing the factorization of polynomials in Z[x]. > Given an integer N ∈ Z_{ >0}, we can write it as N=P(2) for a unique > polynomial P with 0,1-coefficients. By computing the factorization of P in > Z[x] and evaluating the factors at 2, we can obtain a factorization of N._

> _The only weakness of this approach is that the polynomial P may be > irreducible and thus the factorization of N obtained may be trivial. The > problem we study in this paper thus asks for the probability that this > procedure returns only a trivial factorization. Therefore, it is desirable > to have results, such as those of this paper, proving that this probability > converges to 1 very fast. We will discuss our method in Section 1.3. The > method links the problem of irreducibility of random polynomials with mixing > times of certain Markov chains, which are "mod p" analogues of the Bernoulli > convolutions we had studied in earlier work._

> _In this paper, we use results available for the Markov chains to study > random polynomials, but this can be reversed. In particular, in a > forthcoming paper, we will use the results of this paper to obtain new > results about the Markov chains. Our results on irreducibility assume the > Riemann hypothesis for Dedekind zeta functions, or at least some information > on the zeros. In our last theorem, Theorem 7, we show that conversely > irreducibility of random polynomials has (modest) implications about the > zeros of Dedekind zeta functions._

<comment><USER4> There are a huge number of proofs published every year which assume the Riemann Hypothesis. So while you're technically correct that this only gives us _confidence_ , it does significantly reduce our uncertainty and compartmentalize it to the Riemann Hypothesis.

That's really what assuming the Riemann Hypothesis is useful for in modern mathematics. You can obtain new results for a wide variety of things using the following routine:

1\. Assume the Riemann Hypothesis is true and attempt to prove your theorem.

2\. Now assume the Riemann Hypothesis is false and attempt to prove the same theorem.

If you were only able to prove your theorem under one of those conditions, you have a nice result. If you were able to prove the theorem under one condition and disprove it under the other condition, you've got a _great_ result (see the list of things which are equivalent to Riemann). And of course, you might find that you've proven or disproven the theorem for both conditions, which is still good.

<comment><USER3> Thanks for your excellent explanation.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> > _The mathematicians Emmanuel Breuillard and Péter Varjú of the University of > Cambridge proved that as polynomials with only 0 and 1 as coefficients get > longer, they're less and less likely to be factorable at all._

...

> _Breuillard and Varjú proved that it's nearly impossible to find polynomials > of that length that can be factored._

Can someone provide a link to the paper? I'm assuming that what they proved is that (my math is rusty, so what I'm saying may be incorrect) solving polynomials of a single variable with all coefficients either 1 or 0 becomes prohibitively difficult as the the degree increases, which is what I'm getting from the second comment, not that the frequency of irreducible polynomials increases, which is what I get from the first quote.

<comment><USER3> [https://arxiv.org/abs/1810.13360](https://arxiv.org/abs/1810.13360)

<comment><USER5> Thanks...looks like I was wrong.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> The idea of writing A in binary and forming the 0/1 polynomial such that p(2) = A is nifty. Then if you factor p(x) it into two polynomials with integer coefficients u(x)v(x) you have u(2) and v(2) are divisors of A, so if none of them are equal to +-1 you have found something. Assuming it is easy to factor the polynomials.

Factoring polynomials is somewhat easy, but you have to specify factoring into what.

The terminology needs a little clean-up. By the fundamental theorem of algebra we know every polynomial over the reals factors into a product of polynomials of degree no more than 2. So they probably don't mean factoring/primality in general but a definition of factoring in to square-free polynomials. Factoring into square-free polynomials is easy as if q(x)*q(x) divides into p(x) then it also divides into p'(x) (the derivative of p(x) with respect to x) and therefore divides into gcd(p(x), p'(x)). And the gcd() will have integer coefficients and be degree less than p(x) (so not equal to p(x) and degree >= q(x), so if q(x) is non-trivial it forces something nice to happen; even if you don't know what q(x) is).

<comment><USER7> You want the coefficients of the factors to be integers. That is why you can very seldomly factor them.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Can we now safely use RSA keys of length 2048? Or is it still advised to use only use 4096bit long keys?

This notwithstanding that ED25519 is preferred above RSA, eg as OpenSSH supports Curve25519 for 5 years and _is the default when both the client and server support it_ [https://www.openssh.com/txt/release-6.5](https://www.openssh.com/txt/release-6.5)

<comment><USER2> No. This proof says nothing about the security of RSA. I don't know anyone seriously trying to break RSA by factoring polynomials. It's pretty easy to test a bunch of random polynomials and pretty quickly find that this just isn't going to work. You don't need a proof to know this empirically, which is why it isn't a serious attack.

Even if most polynomials were irreducible, which this work doesn't show, that wouldn't rule out having a method that cleverly, but efficiently writes the numbers as polynomials that aren't irreducible.

Also, according to the article, the result is only for polynomials with 0 or 1 coefficients, which aren't the only polynomials, obviously!

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I dislike that Quanta used the term "Back Door" in their headline. That has a pretty specific meaning in information security generally and cryptography particularly. This was not a back door.

The tl;dr: it was conjectured that a more feasible method of factoring large numbers might exist by finding their unique polynomial representation. Polynomials are more quickly factored than integers, and to every integer there corresponds a unique polynomial per the fundamental theorem of algebra.

But that method doesn't actually work, because as polynomials get larger they become commensurately more difficult to factor. In other words, it is as or more difficult to find the polynomial you'd want than it is to just find the prime factors for any given RSA semiprime.

This is a neat result, but nothing is changing for RSA.

<comment><USER3> To people with some infosec knowledge, the poor choice of word "backdoor" sounds as if that the article is about importing an asymmetric backdoor to RSA encryption, which is not the case. If the author wants to have a casual style of writing, I think "loophole" could be used.

<comment><USER4> Agreed. "Loophole" would have been a particularly better choice of terminology. RSA has never had a "back door" in the sense of, e.g., DUAL_EC_DRBG.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> This is textbook scientific clickbait. Catchy title, then an article that says nothing other than affirming the status quo, while then making a claim that demonstrates the title was a clickbait title.

"mathematicians show that the longer the input, the less likely it is that input can be factored" is the literal reason we use longer and longer keys as time goes on.

Shame on this author. These mathematicians did some nice work, and yet the author felt the need to sell snake oil based on it.

<comment><USER10> I don't understand your anger. The conclusion is that it was previously empirically believed to be the case but logically unproven that these polynomial representations of integers were unlikely to be factorable. If I understand this article correctly, it is now logically proven, shutting the door on that particular attack.

<comment><USER9> But it _doesn't_ shut the door: it leaves the door exactly where it already was. It was the case that to make it harder to crack, you make the number bigger. The proof shows that, yes, even if you try the polynomial trick, you're still bound to that limitation: the longer the polynomial, the less likely you'll find an factorisation.

But that proof doesn't change anything. It's a good proof, and the author abuses it to make a claim that cannot be made. No doors have been shut, the status is still quo. Except the author got some ad revenue for writing a clickbaity article that made it onto hacker news.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Can anyone provide a deeper (Algebraic? Number theoretical?) explanation of the polynomial/prime connection? I'd never heard of it before and it's interesting.

<comment><USER12> The way positional number systems work, each position corresponds to a power of the base — e.g. 415 = 4 * 10^2 + 1 * 10^1 + 5 * 10^0. A slightly more complicated way to say this is 415 = 4 * x^2 + 1 * x^1 + 5, where x = 10. Ignore the x = 10 part for a bit, this is your polynomial. You can factor this polynomial normally without changing the fact that substituting x = 10 yields the original number. Because of this, it follows that the factors of the polynomial must also be divisors of the original number when you substitute the variable for the appropriate value!

<comment><USER13> But why is it useful to turn the base of the number system into a variable? Why go through polynomials when you can factor integers directly?

<comment><USER12> Because factoring integers is notoriously hard (which is why RSA is safe), but factoring polynomials is easier, and factoring a polynomial results in finding a divisor for the corresponding integer. Crucially, this relationship is not symmetrical — compound polynomial guarantees compound number, but compound number doesn't guarantee compound polynomial — so the open question was: how often can you use this trick to make breaking RSA easier. What this result proves is that the attack is highly unlikely to work.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Meteor Pack – the ultimate bundle to jump into Meteor - <AUTHOR> http://meteorpack.com <comment><USER2> I am curious how this submission keeps getting upvotes after a) it's a blatant product sell with no upside to the casual reader and b) it's been super- flagged such that it doesn't appear in the first few pages.

One of the things that turned me off Meteor was that although it is open source, almost all the third-party material is _heavily_ commercialized and there are no good neutral resources for learning, which makes me not want to bother. (that, and no SQL support)

<comment><USER3> > I am curious how this submission keeps getting upvotes

[https://twitter.com/msavin/status/622468894180147200](https://twitter.com/msavin/status/622468894180147200)

<comment><USER4> the tweet is gone, what was it about?</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Any examples of those CIA malwares being used for the "great good"? - <AUTHOR> Like e.g. busting child porn and pedophile groups, human trafficking, drug cartels, etc... <comment><USER2> The CIA isn't law enforcement, they don't combat child porn or pedofilia. Plus they've been known to utilise drug channels to launder money and weapons.

It is easier to think of the CIA as a legalised criminal organisation, in that they conduct criminal activities in foreign countries, for what they (and the US government) view as for the "greater good." Which is of course no different than MI6 (SIS), Mossad, or the SVR RF who also primarily conduct illegal activities in foreign countries, often utilising criminal back-channels, and with their respective state endorsement.

For example, the Tor network (used for a huge amount of illegal activity) was primarily funded by the US Government and had expertise provided by US Intelligence. It is no doubt used by organisations like the CIA to help conduct their activities abroad.

Plus the CIA isn't even meant to get involved in domestic law enforcement, they're meant to hand that intelligence off to e.g. the FBI to investigate.

<comment><AUTHOR> > they're meant to hand that intelligence off to e.g. the FBI to investigate.

Of course. That's why there are different organizations. But any examples of such "handling off" to FBI or Police - is what I'm asking.</comment></comment>


Beating A/B Tests - <AUTHOR> https://www.themuse.com/advice/beating-ab-tests

<comment><USER2> Disclaimer: I work for Visual Website Optimizer (VWO). Still, I will try to be as neutral as possible.

> Bandit tests allow you to run as many variations at the same time as you > want, versus A/B testing, which you limits to two.

True that the phrase _A /B Testing_ in a strict sense considers only two variations, but almost all tools allow something called _A /B/n Testing_ which allows for multiple variations. The mathematical foundations of A/B/n testing are as well established as that of A/B testing.

> But there's a deeper, less obvious benefit. Had we run these social button > variations as a series of A/B tests, we'd be at much greater risk of > reaching a local maxima. That is, the odds of us missing the best performing > variation in favor of one that's merely adequate would be higher.

Again, there is another concept called _Multivariate Testing_ to be used for testing multiple changes per page. MVT is also offered by many online A/B testing tools. Again, the theoretical foundation is very well established.

> So I'd have to be on top of my game to make the code-changes as soon as the > Chi Squared value was high enough.

Good A/B testing services do this automatically for you. Losing variations are automatically stopped and winning variations are automatically given 100% traffic. Of course, you have a choice to enable/disable this behavior.

> there's nothing stopping you from tuning a bandit test to behave exactly > like an A/B test.

Yes of course. Because multi-armed bandit (MAB) is _another strategy_ of running A/B tests (more generally A/B/n tests, even more generally multivariate tests). So, technically, you can't beat A/B tests with MAB as your article's headline suggests, because MAB is itself a strategy of running A/B tests. What you can try to beat is _classical strategy_ used by most tools today. Here, the post by VWO linked in your article clearly details the pros and cons of both approaches and establishes why a head to head comparison is, in fact, inappropriate.

> ...the critique is utterly ridiculous

As this point talks direct about VWO, I would take a break from my attempt at neutrality. _tuning a bandit test to behave exactly like an A /B test_ was not the point of our article, and it is not the point of your article either. We have both attempted to compare the two approaches (MAB vs classical) to A/B testing. I do not mind your criticizing our article, but it would only be appropriate to substantiate your criticism with facts. Criticism without facts does not help the cause of discourse. I am fairly well versed with the theory of A/B testing and happy to take any questions here.</comment>


Solar sail (1980) - <AUTHOR> https://patents.google.com/patent/US4614319 <comment><USER2> Drexler's master's thesis has more detail: [https://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/16234](https://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/16234) and pp 7-9 of [http://space.nss.org/media/L5-News-1979-05.pdf](http://space.nss.org/media/L5-News-1979-05.pdf) summarize. I don't know what's been done more recently about space-built sails (or other uses of big, light mirrors).

<comment><USER3> Japan has operated a solar sail near the orbit of Venus, several countries and companies are running experiments on using them to make satellites deorbit faster, the Planetary Society is launching Lightsail-2 on the next Falcon Heavy, and the Breakthrough Starshot hopes to make scifi a reality and shine a huge laser on tiny chip-scale spaceships to send them to Alpha Centauri.

The field has been active.

<comment><USER2> It's great to see progress -- I just meant I'm curious about building the sails in space for higher performance, and haven't heard about anyone else trying to refine those ideas.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> IANAL, but I wonder if this invention has any significance to the Planetary Society's plan to launch a solar sail satellite in the near future, the LightSail [1]. If I understand the patent correctly, Google has patented (a) a means to steer a light powered craft, and (b) a means to produce solar sail. I understand the LightSail controls the sails by changing the orientation of the satellite with respect to the sun. I have no info on how the sail itself was fabricated. Do they owe Google some money?

[1] [http://www.planetary.org/explore/projects/lightsail-solar- sa...](http://www.planetary.org/explore/projects/lightsail-solar-sailing/)

<comment><USER5> This patent is from 1980--I don't think it's Google's.

<comment><USER6> Patents expire after 26 years. Like sane copyright laws should.</comment></comment></comment>


Apple is trolling us on prices? - <AUTHOR> https://mashable.com/article/apple-trolling-prices/ <comment><USER2> Haven't the stand been debated to death by now? It seems like the general opinion is that they should just have made it a $5999 monitor, including the stand, but knocked $1000 of the price is you didn't want the stand.

<comment><USER3> Exactly this.

The reason these components are priced like that is because VFX studios don't use stands or wheels. Everyone has mounts and the machines are locked in place. That's who the Mac Pro and XDR Monitor are aimed at. In fact, that's also why the XDR monitor doesn't have a webcam built-in like almost all modern monitors. Webcams are not allowed in many VFX studios.

So if you want a stand or wheels designed to fit these ultra-niche components, that in and of itself is niche amongst the niche.

The cost of R&D + materials for those parts will probably far exceed what Apple will ever recoup in sales.

This isn't like the Apple Watch where they manufacture 60 million of them every year. There are no scale advantages here, it's just Apple doing enthusiasts a favor and making highly custom one-off work available.

<comment><USER4> Modern monitors have a webcam attached to them? Do you mean attached by the owner or built-in? Weird phrasing.

<comment><USER3> Good catch, fixed.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> What is the point of this kind of article? Don't want to pay 400,- for a set of premium wheels? Then don't buy them and be done with it.

I mean, some people pay that for a pair of jeans. I think that is BS, so I don't buy such jeans. Problem solved. And I didn't even go around berating jeans companies for selling expensive jeans :o

<comment><USER6> > premium wheels

What exactly is premium about them?

<comment><USER7> The Apple logo

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> $59,945.00 for a fully loaded desktop PC with monitor sure does feel like this is an elaborate troll job.

On the other hand, if they are in a position to command that sort of dosh for it, why not?

With all the cash they have, I'd to see some innovation in technology versus a weird chassis design and adding zeros to price tags, though.

<comment><USER5> I think calling it a desktop pc is a bit of an understatement :P

I have to say though, after buying a non-apple laptop recently, I feel at least macbooks are worth the extra 1k over what I paid just for build quality. I something with similar specs to my MBP for ~1600$ and it is just a piece of shitty plastic with a crappy trackpad & worse speakers than on a 90s phone. I'll gladly pay the premium to have apple harware I've learned hehe

<comment><USER9> sure, then how do you explain the continuous drama made here on HN and on Reddit about the faulty Keyboard (for 3 years), the speakers that "pop" (fresh on MBP 16") and thermal throttling?

1K extra doesn't make the product "pro" or "premium", especially if you don't allow people to upgrade it after the Warranty is expired (RAM and Disk soldered, nice).

<comment><USER10> FWIW, the popping speakers are a software related issue, many users who updated to a recent version of Catalina have reported the issue has been fixed for them. Also, thermal throttling has not really been an issue with the new 16" MBP. It can sustain well over base clock for indefinite periods it seems while still staying under the power budget.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> The huge issue is: what are competitors doing?

How can it be that in 2019 I can't have another trackpad which is comparable in quality to a 2009 Macbook Pro trackpad?

How can it be that Windows 10, while slightly better than Windows 7 and 8, is still a terrible mess with regards to a ton of things (examples: hidpi, nonsensical settings organization, drivers requiring manual updates)?

I won't start talking about Linux desktop, because, IMHO, that's the NCAA of desktops. Not the same league as Windows and Mac.

Apple can put an incredible price tag on anything because other vendors are simply doing a terrible job just at coping.

<comment><USER12> Competitors are occupying the vast majority of the market. Apple laptops and desktops comprise about 12% in the US and significantly less abroad.

Comparable trackpads certainly do exist including all the gesture support in Windows or Linux. I have a lowly Acer E5-575G - a 5 year old machine at least - that provides exactly that. When was the last time you looked?

Windows 10 itself has perfect support for hidpi, better settings organization than macOS and I can't remember the last time I've had to update a driver in the past decade... So, what are your specific complaints about hidpi or settings organization?

You're right that Linux desktops aren't in the same league as Windows or Mac. They're actually much, much more flexible. I certainly put them in a different league after having switched. And I'm lazy. I wouldn't have switched if I had to fiddle with things all the time. I recommend Manjaro Linux with XFCE. I'll still use Windows for building Windows things or Macs for building Apple things. But that's just because of lock-in.

Apple can put a 20-30% higher price on _some of their products_ due to a combination of brilliant marketing and technical lock-in. Some people have gotten convinced that there's nothing for them but macOS. You'd definitely see a lot less people on Apple hardware if macOS could easily run on "clones" again as it once did though. That's why Apple will sue anyone who tries to even goes so far as to start a professional service for installing macOS on non-Apple machines.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> It's the same approach that luxury car makers take, where the normal set of options could buy you a budget car.

The people who are going to buy this are a self-selecting group who have the money, want 'the best' performance and want it from Apple.

Yes, you could buy a third party monitor stand or wheels - but you're only saving a small percentage of the price and would have to look at your machine as being 'imperfect'. So you grit your teeth and pay.

The people who wouldn't pay, have already built themselves some fugly hackintosh.

</comment><comment> t-h-e-chief If you compare it to other server systems, it is pretty typical. I remember talking to Cisco about buying some lug nuts for our rack and they quoted me a price that was one-hundred times more than you could easily buy them for from a local supplier.

</comment><comment><USER14> Instead of prices, I think is storage and memory (of base configs for desktops/laptops) 128GB/256SSD/8GB is too low IMHO.</comment>


First Quora Dataset Release: Question Pairs - <AUTHOR> https://data.quora.com/First-Quora-Dataset-Release-Question-Pairs?share=1 <comment><USER2> IDK enough about ML to guess whether this is a uniquely useful dataset, and it is def good they are doing this...but.

Quora and Yelp are ao user-hostile I try to not even open their links. The mobile homepage is literally oath signin buttons...that is it. The blog article on mobile has the large follow button fixed to the bottom of screen, hoping I fat finger it to bail me out of my fav app (a browser) and put it on my device.

On a computer, at least browsing some questions is possible, but it is annoying they won't let non-technical users just see these questions on the mobile web.

I am sure spam & ad revenue is better for them, but there was a time where developers focused on making an app/site useful to attract signups. To be fair, Quora has never done this, but others have followed shit in te last 2-3 years.

I hope this is useful to some, maybe I'll even play with the data, but I can't support Quora by visiting the actual site.

<comment><USER3> It's a dataset of questions marked as duplicate, so it could be used to train on semantic understanding. There are 400,000 pairs -- that's not huge, but it's not bad either.</comment></comment>


Humble Bundle #2 Breaches $900k, On Way To $1M USD - <AUTHOR> http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=ODkzMg

<comment><USER2> OT but those kontera in-text ads are absolutely horrible. They are like land minds spread throughout the article making it just about unreadable (I tend to mouse over the text I am currently reading)

<comment><USER3> They're a complete fuck-over on my G1, where browser navigating seems to always want to hover on links, and the popups make it near impossible to actual read the damn article.

I generally assume that any site that is using this sort of crap is not interested in me as a reader and probably isn't concerned with the quality of the content they are offering; they are just trying to lure clicks and eyeballs.

<comment><USER4> They're a linux-oriented benchmarking site. They're probably pretty strapped for cash on a good day, so they have to use an excess of ads to stay online. They're catering to a small market, so it seems like a fair tradeoff. Besides, their most annoying ads are the easiest to block on any reasonable browser.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> What is really interesting is that the 'linux' buyers are willing to pay roughly 2x what the windows buyers are willing to pay. ($13.71 vs $6.40)

<comment><USER6> I know of one person who paid $0.01 to download the Windows copies. (To be fair, he's in high school and doesn't have much money, but he could probably afford more than that.) I suspect there are more of these folks on Windows than any other OS.

I'd be curious to see the averages if the top and bottom 1% were omitted.

<comment><USER7> It would be interesting to see more complete statistics.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I still love the image when you put an amount less than a dollar :)

<http://cdn.humblebundle.com/hib2/sad_developer.jpg>

</comment><comment><USER9> Link to the original source, for those who want an updating total: <http://www.humblebundle.com/> .

</comment><comment><USER10> touched $1 million and I'm happy!

I bought it and influenced another friend on twitter to buy it :) Also Jeff (@humble) tweeted that he has a surprise for all buyers and that it'll be up in an hour or so. I'm curious as to what that surprise would be.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> I am from a developing country, i just paid 10$ and got all the games. Awesome!

<comment><USER11> Not only that, you get all the games for ALL the platforms. I happen to have both an Ubuntu laptop and another with Windows 7.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> I already had 2 of the games, Machinarium on Steam, and Braid on Xbox 360. Still bought it.

<comment><USER13> I had the two games from the bundle I wqas most interested in, so I just paid less for the bundle. I figure everyone wins that way, compared to me not buying at all.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Great success. I bought a pack for myself and it's worth every penny.</comment>


Ask HN: Help! I can't choose startup accelerators - <AUTHOR>

I was accepted to a startup accelerator recently. I also applied to another accelerator which I won't hear from for a little while. The accelerator I was accepted to needs to know if I'll be participating. I would very much prefer to do the program which I haven't found out about for intangible reasons, but don't want to be in a position where I lose out completely.
What should I do? Are there negotiating tactics or suggestions I could use to get early acceptance, or at least know where they are in considering us? I can't delay the program I'm accepted to much longer.
I've intentionally kept this vague and haven't disclosed the programs. Both accelerators are more or less equitable. It's not YC vs. some new, inexperienced clone. <comment><USER2> Part of running a company is you have to make the tough decisions. If you contact both and one won't wait and the other won't tell you immediately, then just do whats best for your company long term. Your startup will hopefully be around much longer than the 3 months you spend in an incubator. Whats the worse that can happen you decline one, and you wait get declined.. then keep your startup going, get better traction and reapply to both again. Ultimately the success is still up to you and not the incubator.

<comment><USER3> That's true, and reminds me that this is a minor decision in the grand scheme of things.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Congrats! I have no experience in this, but rather than asking the accelerator that you have already been accepted to to wait, it might be better to ask the one that you are waiting on to decide early.

Just contact the leads and be straightforward about it.

</comment><comment><USER3> This is a touchy area because you don't want to make it seem like your are threatening or pressuring the startup accelerator you are vying for. I guess I'd compare this to job negotiation, but probably less flexible. Either way, definitely make it clear that you have options because investors love social proof (whether they'd admit it or not).</comment>


Bob Cringely's prediction on OOP and the Web in 1997 - <AUTHOR> http://www.pbs.org/cringely/pulpit/1997/pulpit_19970612_000533.html <comment><AUTHOR> Don't you think it's actually a question of semi-chaos vs. order (OOP being the "order" side of it)?

Intergalactic Object Models will never rule this industry for the same reason as why Google Directory prooved to be useless and was removed from their front page lately.

</comment><comment><USER2> This article is comparing foosball to Fords. Calling OOP overrated is like calling the wrench overrated. And yes, I always reply in analogies and similes.

</comment><comment><USER3> OOP is heavily overrated. Anything that can be done with OOP can be done, and often done better, without OOP.

<comment><AUTHOR> Objects viewed as miniauture modules can be useful, provided that your modules have states (i.e. static data). The only alternative to this approach would be not having states at all, which is not impossible but may be trickier to implement.

It's inheritance and the (questionable) idea that _everything_ can be represented in class hierarchies that's heavily overrated, I think. That's what Bob meant by "Intergalactic Object Model".

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Why is this interesting? The guys doesn't understand OOP and made incorrect predictions some time ago.</comment>


Startups Sharing Office Space? - <AUTHOR> I've been given a lot of advice lately to forgo a traditional office and instruct engineers to work from home and meet together once per week with everyone.
Do you think other, similarly cash strapped startups would want to share an office? Consider this:
One firm would rent a small board-room sized space, with perhaps one small executive office. These are available for around $500-1000/month. The space would be shared with about 5-7 other startups, each paying around $100-150/month to use the space once per week.
For the firm leasing the office, the space would be almost free. The firms subletting would have access to a very cheap, fully furnished office.
Does this sound like something people would be interested in? Any other thoughts? <comment><USER2> Vancouver has something like this, only more elaborate - <http://abetterplacetowork.com/> . I can also say, from DabbleDB's experience, that: \- 5-6 people can work quite well together in a boardroom type space, all sitting around a long table together, especially if they're all used to working on laptops anyway \- having the executive office in the back is important so you have somewhere for private meetings and phone calls \- sharing office space is fun if you like the other company (we've had both Snipshot and Auctomatic subletting from us at different times) \- even if you have the office space full time (which we do), people will probably only show up 3 days a week or so (at least for us, we're most likely all found in the office from about 11-6 on Tue-Thurs, and spend the rest of the time working from home/cafes/etc).

</comment><comment><USER3> Have you seen CoWorking? <http://coworking.pbwiki.com/>

<comment><AUTHOR> that looks neat. however, i don't quite get it.

is it a place for people working on a single project or a place where people working on many different projects can come together?

<comment><USER4> It's a place where people working on many different projects come together at the same time to work. It is sorta like working at a coffee shops full of other startups, without having to pay for the coffee.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> We actually have good extra space in our SF SOMA office. Let us know if you need any - maybe we could work out an arrangement. (We also have a phone system that allows multiple companies to have their own call-in identity)

</comment><comment><USER6> To me, it's worth paying a little money to be close to your team all day. You can do it cheaply. For example, <http://bunkerstudios.com/> offers space in San Francisco for about $200/month per person.

</comment><comment><USER7> A bunch of people seem to be thinking along these lines.

CIT in Cambridge is one example. In the Bay Area you have CitizenSpace and HatFactory (both coworking spaces, but I've heard that CitizenSpace is the better of the two).

<comment><USER7> Correction: I meant to say _CIC_ in Cambridge (as someone else already pointed out).

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Most cities have these (almost) free office spaces called "Starbucks". You can meet there until revenue starts coming in.

</comment><comment><USER9> Similar things: In Cambridge there is the Cambridge Innovation Center(CIC). Also in Cambridge is Betahouse.</comment>


[Mesa-dev] Direct3D 9 state tracker - <AUTHOR> http://lists.freedesktop.org/archives/mesa-dev/2013-July/041900.html

<comment><USER2> a summarizing comment from reddit's discussion ( [http://www.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/1igw7r/direct3d_9_sup...](http://www.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/1igw7r/direct3d_9_support_released_for_linux/) )

> "Its not been integrated into Mesa or Wine yet. It'll be 1yr+ til that > happens and more until it feeds into Ubuntu and other distros. Even then, > you'll only be able to play the game through WINE, since this allows native > DirextX9c thru Wine, not magically making all games work in Linux. Before > Wine has converted DirectX9c to OpenGL then to gpu drivers, which caused > slow down and incompatibility issues, now its going to be Wine with > DirectX9c native to gpu driver, which should reduce lag and incompatibility > issues. Only opensource drives will get this benefit though, since this > state tracker is just for gallium3D opensource drivers."</comment>